May prices remained firm in morning business Thursday but weregetting softer in the afternoon after the June futures screenstarted retreating from a dalliance around the $2.40 level, a GulfCoast producer reported. However, a marketer saw little movementeither way for May numbers in western markets. And another tradersaid intra-Alberta prices “are getting wild,” reporting themstraddling the C$2.80 level Thursday.

Barring any radical late changes, it appears that May indexeswill be up 30-40 cents or more from April’s. One source cited twomajor factors in the gas market’s current bullish tone: (1) Theyear-on-year storage surplus, which had seemed so overwhelming aslittle as a month or two ago, has been declining rapidly at thesame time that deliverability constraints resulting from 1998’sdrilling cutbacks have been showing up for many traders. (2) Crudeoil prices remained above $18/bbl last week and show little sign ofcollapsing back to the sub-$11 levels that existed earlier thisyear.

A buyer who paid in the mid $1.90s for gas into CIG-North Systemsaid supplies seemed fairly tight. “I had a couple of other dealssnapped up by someone else before I could pull the trigger,” hesaid, expressing amazement at Rockies prices for May climbing morethan 40 cents above April indexes.

A Rockies trader sees little risk in going into May on the shortside. The Pacific Northwest is due to warm up around May 5, hesaid, and when that happens mountain snow will start to melt andgive a boost to hydropower production. He looks for western pricesto fall as hydropower displaces a large amount of electricgeneration load for gas.

May should be an interesting month for Southwest markets due tothe unusually high level of scheduled maintenance, a marketer said.Conoco’s Blanco (NM) processing plant will be down 100% May 11-13and at a fraction of normal capacity for some days after that, hesaid. Williams will be performing some plant maintenance in thesame area, the marketer added, and El Paso has a heavy schedule ofMay maintenance.

Last-gasp April trading saw numerals in the price change columnthat closely resembled those of the day before, but this time theyhad plus signs in front instead of minus signs. Most points wereflat to 3-4 cents higher. Northern Natural Gas was the only piperecording nickel-plus gains at all three major tradingpoints-field, demarcation point and Ventura. Everybody wanted toget daily swing deals done quickly in order to finish May business,an aggregator said.

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